Litter Boxes In Schools- An Idea Whose Time Has Come, Part Trois
When the going gets dumb, the dumb run for Governor
I intended this story to be a one-off, but sometimes stupid takes on a life of its own, and I become powerless in the presence of its charms. In this case, as a follow-up to my original story on litter boxes in schools and its follow-up, allow me to present Chapter Three (hopefully, this will be the final chapter). If you were expecting the characters to have gained any insight and become any more intelligent, you’d be sorely disappointed.
No, this one keeps getting dumber, as if that’s even possible.
Heidi Ganahl, a very smart lady who is the actual Republican nominee for Colorado governor, [is] seeking to replace Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. Ms. Ganahl is genuinely concerned about all the transgender people taking over everywhere, and also believes that there are many many children in Colorado schools who "identify as cats" and have been indulged by schools, where teachers and administrators just let them go around in cat costumes all day. It's a variant of that weird claim earlier this year by a Nebraska state senator who said schools are even providing these cat-children with large litter boxes that they use instead of restrooms for their pooping and peeing needs. He later acknowledged that was not the case.
Now, the rest of America knows this is a crazy rumor that has been debunked again and again, as if you actually needed to "debunk" something that's so prima facie insane. But Ganahl is not backing down from her insistence that schools are allowing such "woke ideology, ideological stuff" in the schools, because isn't it obvious that liberals who think trans people have rights would also indulge children who demand to be treated as household pets? See, the point here is that liberals are just that gullible, mmm-hmm.
Gullible? Might I remind my gentle reader that Liberals aren’t the ones requesting litter boxes for, um, relief purposes? Ms. Ganahl is the Republican convinced that “children as furries: are a clear and present danger to Colorado schools because of “woke ideology, ideological stuff.”
Not that Ms. Ganahl could define “woke.” But, since she’s linked it with kids identified as cats and litter boxes in schools, she KNOWS it’s something unnatural, evil, and awful.
We should probably note here that the Denver Post, in a story Tuesday checking whether schools had problems with kids "identifying as cats," clarified that while Ganahl is dead certain that children are being encouraged in their belief they're cats, "Ganahl has not claimed that Colorado schools are employing litter boxes," which does at least take away the most obviously catshit insane element of the still-fake rumor. Hilariously, the schools also universally denied that any students were being provided with litter boxes.
But Ganahl also issued a statement to the Post saying that schools are allowing kids to come to school in cat costumes on the regular, and parents are sick of it.
“As a candidate for governor, but more than anything as a parent, my concern is that distractions like children dressing up in costumes at school detract from the reality that 60% of our kids are not performing at grade level,” she said. “It’s tragic that we are failing our children. We need to make them our priority.”
Why, why will no one stand up for the children and make them take their cat ears off?
So this is where we will immediately call bullshit. Nobody is mad little kids wear cat ears, and if they were it wouldn't rise to a state-level crisis; Ganahl was absolutely trying to promote the "litterboxes" delusion, because that's what rabid rightwingers absolutely believe lately. If she managed to steer clear of saying litterboxes, she was certainly flicking all around it with a nifty laser pointer.
So, no, children in Colorado are not identifying as cats. Nor are they being provided litter boxes with which to relieve themselves. But, unfortunately, this is not why parents and schools are failing their children.
It might just be that idjits like Ganahl are making “issues” out of made-up “problems” which only exist in their fever dreams. I don’t know; maybe it was all the drugs they did in the ‘60s.
Ganahl appeared on a rightwing Denver radio talk show to discuss all the evidence she has of these very real kids who identify as cats, as well as the crazy liberal educators who encourage such delusions. After some chat with host George Brauchler about her desire to cut taxes and give more money to the police, Ganahl explained that the cat thing is absolutely true, explaining she's received "hundreds of emails" from parents who are outraged about "kids dressing up in costumes" at school, which — even without the litter boxes! — is apparently a major reason kids aren't learning, and also wokeism is taking over.
She said she has proof, too, and will share it with the media! (we haven't seen this proof, sorry). Transcript, via Colorado Pols:
GANAHL: So, we provided a list of 30 schools [in which] parents and students have told us this is happening. We’ve provided pictures, but we’ve blurred out the faces. We do not want kids and parents doxxed. That’s why I’m taking the heat, because the media will go after them. Three parents give their names and speak up in Matt Connelly’s Campfire articles — he already put that out.
And, honestly, it’s crazy that they’re trying to say it’s not happening. And parents and students are reaching out nonstop right now. We’re going to keep telling them to send their comments to the media. The media won’t cover it. They don’t want to. They want to distract from the nonsense that’s happening in the classrooms that's keeping kids from learning how to read, write, and do math.
Interestingly, “she’s received ‘hundreds of emails,’” yet she’s shared nary a one with anyone to provide some context to her contention that this “problem” is real.
And to say that “[t]he media won’t cover it” is absurd. If there were anything to this story, the mainstream media would be all over it. Are you kidding? Schoolchildren identifying as cats and using litter boxes instead of restrooms? That would be on every wire service from coast to coast. Newspapers in Burundi would be running this story on their front page. So the fact that the New York Times or Washington Post aren’t covering it tells me that the story is bullshit and it’s the product of Heidi Ganahl’s desire for attention.
The reality is that Ganahl has no proof. There are no photographs. There are only Ganahl’s deceptive claims and her cheap, desperate attempts to draw attention to her floundering campaign.
Unless someone in her campaign manages to surface with a video of her opponent, Jared Polis, doing the horizontal mambo with a unicorn, Heidi Ganahl has as much chance of being Governor as I do of winning Miss Congeniality.
Below is the “proof” Ganahl sent to 9News:
If you’re looking at that photo and thinking, “Hey, that looks like a picture someone pulled randomly off da Interwebz,” that’s because it is.
That is exactly what you think it is: A random picture of a person in a costume pulled off the Internet. This makes less sense than presenting a photo of Chuck E. Cheese as proof that restaurants in Colorado are infested with rodents.
We can laugh at all of this, though only to a point. This entire episode is one of the more bizarre events we can recall in our many years of covering Colorado politics, but it speaks to a bigger issue: What in the hell is going on over at the Ganahl campaign? This is not a normal political operation. This is complete insanity.
It’s been clear for a long time that Ganahl is an unserious person running an unserious campaign for the top job in Colorado. Ganahl is not going to come close to defeating incumbent Democrat Jared Polis, and thank goodness for that. We’ve zoomed past the partisan political argument at this point; it is not hyperbole to say that putting Ganahl in charge of an entire state would be flat-out dangerous.
Of course, I know nothing of Colorado politics, so when someone who does refers to Heidi Ganahl as “an unserious person running an unserious campaign,” I tend to take them at their word. The technical diagnosis for Ms. Ganahl is “batsh*t crazy.”
That she’s running for Governor as a Republican is anything but a surprise.
One thing seems clear: Colorado schools stopped teaching critical and deductive thinking when Heidi Ganahl and her pals were in school. Unfortunately, she hasn’t grasped that making claims means providing evidence, NOT just a random picture off the Internet from a Chuck E. Cheese job fair.
The sad thing about this sorry episode is that it metastasized into something that eventually drew in the Denver Post, which ran a story
in which multiple Colorado school districts explained that no, they had not in fact had any issues with students "identifying as cats or other animals," in response to that list of 30 schools Ganahl has been circulating — which offered only the vaguest of claims; one school in Douglas County, the list claimed had had to "ban dog collars," but a spokesperson said that was not true.
Callie Berkson, a spokesperson for Mesa County Valley School District in Grand Junction, helpfully explained that some kids like to wear headbands with cat ears on them, is that what you were talking about? She said that the cat-ear headbands might be
“indicative of a trend which has commonly been referred to as ‘furries.'” But she said it has been present in schools, and in Colorado, for years and is not an issue in the district.
Well shoot, no kids "identifying as cats" there — she says. And not even any hissing!
What about dogs? Surely there are kids identifying as dogs? No? Damn….
Asked about the Denver Post story, Ganahl told Brauchler simply that "the school districts are not being truthful," and that she has "provided evidence, over and over again," and also the real problem is that the media doesn't want to talk about how the schools are failing utterly, because they keep focusing on this furry thing — that Ganahl brought up in the first place.
Again, this is all a really stupid proxy for the war on transgender kids anyway and Heidi Ganahl will not be elected, so the hell with it.
Well, they’re right. One, this is all a stand-in for the war on transgender kids, and it’s a pretty silly and transparent way to go about it. Two, Heidi Ganahl has as much chance of defeating incumbent Jared Polis as I do of winning the Nobel Literature Prize.
Like that’s going to happen….
Ganahl is just another of the parade of low-quality candidates the GOP is putting forward this election cycle. Are Republicans that desperate? Or have they stopped trying and are willing to endorse anyone A) with a pulse and/or B) who worships at the altar of Orange Jesus?
I don’t think I’m straining credulity when I say that Heidi Ganahl lacks the intellectual agility and/or mental acuity of a box of hair. However, I sincerely hope the people of Colorado will be smart enough to recognize how intelligent she isn’t.
Otherwise, it’s going to be a long four years in Colorado. It already seems as if this midterm election campaign has gone on FOREVER.
"This makes less sense than presenting a photo of Chuck E. Cheese as proof that restaurants in Colorado are infested with rodents." -- Having read all the way through, I'm still chuckling over that line!